When hitch-hiking was THE way to travel

Walt Rummel

Published 12:20 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

No cost, no responsibility, the would-be traveler simply stood by the side of the road or highway (that was before freeways, too) and whenever a car approached, the traveler turned on a big smile, and held up a clenched hand with an upright thumb. It was the "Sign of the Hitchhiker" that said, "I need a ride."

As a student at Michigan State, it was the quickest way to travel home for the weekend because you didn't have a car.

Hitchhikers stood all over East Lansing, bumming rides to Lansing or Detroit. For Flint-bound, or Saginaw-bound, or Thumb-bound travelers, the favorite spot was the junction of Abbott Road and M-78. Sometimes on Friday nights or Saturdays there were a dozen or more, standing in an orderly pattern, smiling, waving, flagging for a ride.

My trip to Sebewaing that early spring Saturday of my freshman year had been very successful, as three rides took me to Durand, then Flint and now I was standing at the main corner of Bridgeport, well past the halfway point home.

After only a minute or two, a stately black Willys-Knight slowed and stopped. A young male driver waved "come on" to me, and I dashed to the passenger side to the back seat door he had opened to me. "Get in," he invited, adding, "This is my wife and baby."

We exchanged a few pleasantries, as I slid in behind the young woman in the front passenger seat. I was faintly aware that the driver ground gears a bit as he shifted through the low, medium and third. Almost cheerfully, he half-turned to me, "You don't mind if I hold this pistol on you, do you? Just in case you get fresh with my wife or baby?"

At MSU, I was enrolled in ROTC Field Artillery, so I was well aware how a .45 looks. This one was pointed directly at me, from the front seat. He was holding it in his left hand, across his midsection, sort of half-cradling it under his right upper arm.

The young woman was not speaking kindly to him. "Put that gun away, you drunken fool!" she ordered. I remember I said, "I just want to get home, but if you're worried, just stop and let me off."

He replied, quite cheerfully, "No, you're all right just as long as you don't get fresh with my wife."

Her angry replies to him, and my sincere offer to get off, availed nothing. He talked freely, weaving the car more all the time, changing lanes, speeding faster and faster. We passed cars, and he honked often, sometimes waving his fist at drivers he felt weren't driving fast enough. The few miles to Saginaw were chewed up quickly, and we crossed Hess past the Fairgrounds, then across Holland. I dreaded to see how he'd handle the main corner junction with Washington.

I was holding my breath. The woman had stopped her arguing, crushing the baby to her breast, awaiting the worst. We were approaching Jefferson when the driver suddenly moved his left hand, plunging the pistol into his pocket with the words, "There, I think there are enough police around here to protect us if you try to start anything with my wife."

We crossed Jefferson, but, alas, the driver failed to see the red light ahead on Washington. I closed my eyes as I saw what was about to happen. The woman with the baby was sobbing, trying to cover her baby with her own body. Too late, our car rammed into the rear of last of the cars stopped for the red light. In one grand act, there was the crunch of autos, spinning, bumping; tossing. A policeman across the street came running toward us, his whistle screaming. The driver ahead, who had been rammed, half-rolled out of his vehicle, angrily coming toward us, cursing and waving his fist at the attacker. The woman was picking herself and the baby from between the seat and the dash.

Squirming unnoticed on the floor of the back seat, my mind told me, "What a ride! Five miles of travel, the guy just caused a wreck, he's drunk driving, he has a pistol in his pocket. I could foresee that I was about to spend my afternoon in police custody for a ride of about five miles!"

No one was paying any attention to me. The policeman was yanking the driver out of our car, a friendly lady was carefully taking the baby from the weeping mother, the rammed driver was helping the policeman, and there I sat.

I opened my door slowly and softly, slid my right foot out of the door onto the pavement. I gathered up my bag and stood up on the street. No one noticed me. No one paid me any attention.

I closed the door softly, hacking into the circle of people who were assembling. I must have been invisible, because no one acknowledged me, no one even looked at me. I backed away slowly, and slunk into the circle. I turned toward the sidewalk, began to walk to the west, speeding up as I moved away from the hubbub. At the corner, never even looking back, I turned right, and hurried north on Washington.

In what couldn't have been more than two minutes, a car pulled up alongside, beeped the horn, and the driver shouted, "We're heading north. Need a ride?" It was a couple with two youngsters in the back seat.

The driver smiled. "I see your green and white MSU sticker on your travel bag. That's where I went to college, and I did plenty of hitch hiking in my time, too."

Some 50 minutes later, after a pleasant conversation and drive, the family dropped me off at my home in Sebewaing.

"No use telling them about my experience," I decided, so I never recorded this story before.

Yes, I was guilty of "leaving the scene of an accident." But, hopefully, the statute of limitations is in effect.